Teacher Resources

Teacher Handbook

The teacher handbook contains a brief summary of the rationale behind the DTEEL project as well as an overview of the lesson plans designed for each grade level.

 Click here to download the Teacher Handbook.

DTEEL Curriculum Units

Each grade level, kindergarten through 5th, contains between 8 and 9 units, each focusing on one of the following areas of engineering: Materials, Structures, Mechanisms, and Work & Energy. Later units in 3rd, 4th and 5th grades synthesize previous content in Systems thinking. All grade levels contain engineering activities designed to maximize collaboration, communication, and systems thinking (Katehi, Pearson, & Feder, 2009). Specifically, the activities:

  • structure the use of language for communication—verbal, non-verbal, and text-based— to integrate students’ STEM and linguistic development without compromising one to the other.

  • incorporate a collaborative focus to facilitate the social, as well as STEM, integration of EL students necessary for their overall academic success.

  • develop systems thinking, the ability to see a problem from different perspectives and view an issue from multiple angles.

  • articulate clear language objectives for emergent bilingual EL students at varying levels of English proficiency.

Kindergarten

1st Grade
Click below to download entire curriculum and materials’ list:

Below is a list of all the units in the curriculum:

  1. Materials: Our Material World
  2. Materials: Properties of Material-Elasticity
  3. Materials: Making a Bendable Toy
  4. Structures: Containers and Boxes
  5. Structures: Flat Space
  6. Structures: Inside-Out Boxes
  7. Mechanisms: Exploring Wheels and Axles
  8. Mechanisms: A Frame that Rolls
  9. Mechanisms: Creating Team Entries
 Click below to download entire curriculum and materials’ list:

Below is a list of all the units in the curriculum:

  1. Materials: Natural, Processed and Synthetic Materials
  2. Materials: Properties of Natural, Processed and Synthetic Materials
  3. Materials: Combined Materials and their Properties
  4. Structures: Triangles and Trusses
  5. Structures: Making Strong Structures
  6. Mechanisms: We Use Balancing
  7. Mechanisms: A Card That Moves with Levers
  8. Mechanisms: Mechanimals Design Project: Toys that Move with Lever

2nd Grade

3rd Grade
Click below to download entire curriculum and materials’ list:

Below is a list of all the units in the curriculum:

  1. Materials: Special Properties of Materials
  2. Materials: Designing Experiments for Properties of Materials
  3. Structures: Making a Strong Frame
  4. Mechanisms: Weird Wheels and their Axles
  5. Work and Energy: Black Box Thinking
  6. Mechanisms: A See-Saw Playground
  7. Mechanisms: Pop-Up Moving Scenes
  8. Work & Energy: Technology Fair
 Click below to download entire curriculum and materials’ list:

Below is a list of all the units in the curriculum:

  1. Materials: Changing Materials
  2. Materials: Connecting Materials
  3. Structures: Models We Can Make
  4. Structures: See-Saw Shoemobile!
  5. Structures: Stable Structures
  6. Mechanisms: Bean-Ho!
  7. Mechanisms: Linear and Back-and-Forth Motion
  8. Work & Energy: Power-Full Things
  9. Systems: If-Then Logic

 

4th Grade

5th Grade
Click below to download entire curriculum and materials’ list:

Below is a list of all the units in the curriculum:

  1. Materials: The Materials Cycle
  2. Structures: Investigating Types of Loads
  3. Structures: Testing Construction Techniques
  4. Mechanisms: Rotary Motion-Exploring with Gears
  5. Mechanisms: More Rotary Motion-Exploring with Pulleys
  6. Work & Energy: Hydraulics-Exploring Water Power
  7. Work & Energy: Pneumatics-Exploring Air Power
  8. Work & Energy: Using Fluids to Power Toys
  9. Systems: If-Then Chains in a Gadget
 Click below to download entire curriculum and materials’ list:

Below is a list of all the units in the curriculum:

  1. Materials: Green Music Makers
  2. Structures: Bridges on a Budget
  3. Mechanisms: Mechanimals Design Project
  4. Mechanisms: Reverse Engineering
  5. Work & Energy: Measuring Elasticity
  6. Work & Energy: Elastic Launcher
  7. Systems: Inventing with Control Logic
  8. Systems: Rube Goldberg Greetings

 

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This material is based upon work supported by the National Science Foundation under Grant No. (1503428-PI, Callahan). Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation.